To be bold, if I may: the United States’ predilection for standing strongly opposed to major international accords is arrogant, greatly harmful to the world at large, and a damned nuisance.

Let me explain.

On February 11^th, 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan. It was a bold move in the increasingly desperate quest for an end to the tragic events taking place in Darfur, and further proof that the young ICC is fully prepared to kick ass and take names.

In only seven years of existence, the ICC has become a dominant force in the pursuit of peace and justice worldwide. Prosecuting crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide when a nation is unwilling or unable to do so itself, the ICC’s sole aim is to ensure no one—regardless of military or government rank—is exempt from accountability. One wonders who could be against such an endeavor, but surprise surprise, the United States was one of only seven countries to vote against the Rome Statute, which created the ICC.

The Bush Administration further distanced the US from the ICC in 2002 with the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA). The law prohibits the US from cooperating with the ICC, authorizes the use of “all means necessary” to free US nationals from ICC custody, and prohibits US participation in international peacekeeping activities unless immunity from the ICC is guaranteed. Furthermore, the Bush Administration requested countries around the world to agree to “Article 98 Agreements” which prohibit the surrender of US nationals to the ICC. Given the overwhelming support of the ICC by the majority of the world’s nations, it looks like the United States would like two sets of rules: one for us, and one for everyone else.

This isn’t the first time the US has remained conspicuously absent from participation in major international legislation. We may have signed the Kyoto Protocol, but we have yet to ratify it, which renders the signature meaningless. World leader we may be, but if an international resolution means progress around the globe at the price of a possible hit to Wall Street, our decision is made swiftly and always in favor of the mighty dollar.

But the ICC issue isn’t so much about money as it is about power, in however much you can distinguish those two things. The ASPA does little to hide the government’s fear that the ICC will prosecute members of our military. Well yes, the ICC can and will investigate people regardless of military status, but only if their own government won’t, and only if they are accused of truly horrific crimes. So it seems that a government desperately trying to avoid this is a government with something to hide.

The ICC does not interfere with legal proceedings of nations, provided they are carried out in a fair manner. They don’t remove heads of state, invade countries to “set things right”, or unnecessarily step on the toes of functioning legal systems. If they did, then the disapproval of the United States would be understandable, if scathingly ironic. But the ICC does none of those things. The ICC steps in only when all else fails, and when no one else will.

In addition to President Bashir’s warrant, the ICC is dealing with issues in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda. Currently on trial are war lords charged with enlistment of child soldiers, directing attacks on civilian populations, and knowingly permitting sexual slavery, among other atrocities. The scope of the crimes is truly incomprehensible, but the process is absolutely as fair as any country with the Bill of Rights should expect. The defendants are presumed innocent, granted legal counsel, and have the right to present evidence in their defense in court and to remain silent. All charges must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is both baffling and infuriating that the most powerful nation in the world is opposed to proceedings such as these. Fair due process of the law addressing the most heinous crimes in recent memory would seem to be something everyone can get behind. While the circumstances from which these wrongs come are immeasurably complex and not solvable by justice alone, letting them go unpunished is unthinkable.

Given the gravity of the offenses currently on trial, my hope is that the United States military doesn’t have anything on the same level it’s trying to hide. But I have to say; perhaps our objection to the ICC will become prudent when they discuss adding the crime of aggression to the statute later this year. Without so much as a definition, it’s hard to say whether the US is guilty of this, but I’d be surprised if we weren’t close. But that’s all speculative. As far as I know we have not committed crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocide since 2002 which we are not already investigating ourselves.

President Obama has said multiple times he plans on repairing America’s relations with the world. I can think of no better step in the right direction than supporting the ICC, especially in light of President Bashir’s arrest warrant. After all, it’s up to himself or his government to produce him at court in The Hague. Without substantial international pressure it’s likely he’ll opt to skip town instead (or worse, escalate violence in hopes of garnering a desperate plea for peace in the form a deferral from the UN).

It may seem hypocritical for us to throw our weight behind one of the most important human rights organizations in the world when we are certainly guilty of some questionable human rights practices of our own. But it’s time for the US to earn the respect of the world again, and being nonchalant about whether war criminals get away with their crimes or not isn’t exactly the way to do it. We can hardly be beacons for peace and justice in the world if we don’t support their greatest defender.

It’s the middle of February now—how are you doing on those New Year’s Resolutions? If you’re like me, and love to set goals, you probably concocted a long list of things to do, achieve, eradicate, and solve in 2009. If you’re like me, you also probably have declined to take action on many of them in favor of sitting on the couch. It’s not that I don’t care about my goals any more. It’s just that sitting on the couch is so pleasant, and taking action is, well, hard.

But the difficulty of my resolutions is nothing compared with the plans of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. These aren’t just New Year’s resolutions, these are New Millennium resolutions. Adopted in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are ambitious in the extreme. End poverty and hunger. Ensure universal primary education, and equal access to education for girls. Reduce child and maternal mortality and combat HIV/AIDS. Promote and ensure environmental sustainability, access to safe drinking water, and open access to the market for developing nations. Oh, and all these things are supposed to be achieved by 2015.

I don’t mean to be a cynic, but it’s 2009. 2015 is only six years, two World Cups, and two Harry Potter movies away. It took me nearly six years to graduate from college, so I am just a little bit skeptical that plans as grand as the MDGs are achievable in just over half a decade. It would seem impossible in the best of times, but now, with the global economy still in a free-fall, extreme poverty is actually increasing.

This isn’t to say that they haven’t made any progress. Given the enormity of the goals and the brevity of the time span, the numerous agencies working on the MDGs have made some remarkable changes. They have halved the number of people living in extreme poverty in East Asia. They have provided widespread measles immunization in Northern Africa and Latin America. They have increased access to clean drinking water in urban areas around the globe. Clearly there is cause to celebrate, but the end is nowhere near in sight.

There are 20 specific goals, and Sub-Saharan Africa has improved on none of them. No region on Earth reports progress in all 20 areas, and many of the problems are worsening instead of improving. What is going wrong? In an incredibly thorough report Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, issued in 2005, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs and his coauthors walk through the current state of affairs in all the target regions, and discusses what is working and what isn’t. They identify four major contributors to lack of progress: governance failures, poor geographical conditions, pockets of poverty in otherwise middle-income nations, and “poverty traps”, their term for countries too poor to help themselves.

These pitfalls are obviously hugely obstructive to improvement, but I believe, perhaps naively, that they can be rendered obsolete. All it would take would be one monumentally simple but impossibly difficult act: getting the people to care. History has proven time and again that any adversity can be overcome if enough human souls are dedicated to overcoming it. But the larger the obstacle the more people are needed, and the eradication of poverty world-wide is about as big an obstacle as there is.

The other problem with getting the people to care is, in almost all cases, the care of the people affected by the crisis is not enough. If there is a government which needs overthrowing or a revolution that needs starting, a group of sufficiently angry people is often adequate. But most of the time, those in trouble are unseen enough that their voices alone go unheard. The abolition of slavery in the United States took not just the efforts of black abolitionists and the slaves themselves, it also took the work and passion of white Northerners whose everyday lives weren’t affected by slavery one way or the other. Female suffragists campaigned tirelessly and nobly to get the vote for women, but ultimately it was up to male government officials to make it a reality.

Last semester I took a gender studies class, and in one session we broke into small groups to discuss gay marriage. After an inconclusive discussion in my group, a classmate announced, “Well, it doesn’t affect me, so I guess I don’t really care.” At the time I was offended by her comment, but of course I am guilty of the same apathy towards issues which don’t affect me. While I do think people are naturally empathetic, it is difficult to turn empathy into action.

The problem with the Millennium Development Goals is not only that they don’t directly affect those of us in the best position to make a difference, but also that many of us are completely unaware of the true scope of the problem. How many Americans and Canadians do you suppose have heard of the MDGs? How many Western Europeans are insisting that their governments put more time and money into their realization? How many Japanese and Australian citizens use poverty eradication as a primary factor in their voting decision making? We all feel sadness when we see a picture of a starving orphan, but when poverty isn’t staring us in the face it is all too easy to forget about it.

I do believe large-scale caring about the MDGs would be the most powerful agent to seeing them achieved. I do not, however, have any clue as to how to make manifest this caring in people the world over. The most powerful governments will only take strong action if their citizens insist upon it. The economic crisis has paralyzed many with fear, and it seems unlikely that the concerns of the poorest billion folks on the planet will occupy much of our thoughts until it is over. I think it is unwise, however, to assume that once the economy is on its way up the MDGs will achieve themselves. Poverty has existed as long as civilization has. Its eradication is going to take more than some random acts of kindness during the good times.

I don’t have any answers. I have only questions. Evolutionarily, it makes sense for us to care for one another, and I think this is the biological basis for empathy. But why does empathy sometimes motivate us to action and sometimes pass without a second thought? What will it take to convince the wealthiest in the world to help the poorest? We know our strength, and what we are capable of when we join together. What is stopping us?

To learn more about the Millennium Development Goals, please visit http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals

“Government…can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.”

~Sister Helen Prejean

Since 1973, exactly 130 people have been released from death row upon evidence of their innocence. To me, this is a troubling number, since I find it highly disturbing that an innocent person could be on death row at all. But being a human enterprise, the justice system is bound to make mistakes, and the sentencing of criminals to death is not an exception. That is precisely the problem.

Troy Anthony Davis has been in prison for 18 years following his conviction of the 1989 murder of a police officer. His execution has been scheduled and rescheduled three separate times, and once the order of a stay of execution came mere hours before the lethal injection was to be carried out. His case has attracted the attention of human rights organizations worldwide, and it was through Amnesty International that it was brought to my attention.

Since Mr. Davis’ trial, 7 of the 9 witnesses have recanted their testimonies. One of the remaining witnesses has been implicated as the real killer. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the murder, and the murder weapon has never been found. I am not a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that the likelihood of his guilt is beyond a reasonable doubt. While he has once again been granted a stay of execution, no court has yet heard an evidentiary hearing to examine the witnesses.

I cannot imagine the suffering Mr. Davis has endured throughout this agonizing process. It could be argued that the process of repeatedly scheduling executions and granting last-minute stays is itself cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, the unconstitutionality of cruel and unusual punishment is often cited as an argument against capital punishment at all. Others contend that executions are no better than the murders for which the prisoner is being executed.

The death penalty is certainly a very intriguing issue, philosophically. Whether the state ever has the right to kill one of its citizens is a fascinating if morose ethical question. Whether “an eye for an eye” is morally viable is a similarly intriguing topic for philosophers armchair and professional. But in my opinion these and any other theoretical musings hold little value in the actual debate over capital punishment in the United States and elsewhere.

Capital punishment should be abolished because it is not fair. The snarky observer may point out that nothing in life is, but that too is beside the point. Life itself will never be fair, but that doesn’t give us license to continue practices which we know could put an innocent person to death.

The handing out of death penalties in the United States is discriminatory in two of America’s favorite ways: race and class. Many people know of the rampant racism at work in the justice system. African-Americans in particular are imprisoned in hugely disproportionate numbers, with Hispanics in not much better shape. What may come as a surprise then is that more white people have been executed than black. Sadly, this is not a case of improved attitudes towards race in this country. For while the race of the perpetrator doesn’t seem to be a huge factor in capital cases, the race of the victim makes all the difference in the world. 78% of victims in capital cases are white, while only about 50% of total murder victims are white. So you see, it’s not that we see black criminals as being worth less, we just see white victims as being worth more.

Furthermore, the poorer defendant is at a huge disadvantage. This is true of all criminal proceedings, but when the stakes are as high as a capital case it becomes especially disturbing. Those who are in the lowest 1/3 in terms of spending on attorneys are more than twice as likely to be sentenced to death as those who spend more.

With odds like these, it is sadly unlikely that Troy Davis is a remarkable exception to an otherwise spotless system. Given that 130 people have been exonerated, one has to wonder how many innocent people have been put to death. Just one is enough to require that the practice be abolished, and I have little doubt that there has been more than one. Even with improvements in forensic science and the ubiquity of DNA testing, there will be more. It is a human enterprise, after all, and can never be infallible.

Of course, while Troy Davis may be innocent, there is also a chance he is not. But whether you believe he is guilty or innocent, whether you are opposed to the death penalty or not, I hope you can agree that not granting him a hearing with such an upheaval in the witness testimony would be a crime in itself. He has a right to a fair trial, one free from police belligerence and harsh interrogation. One would hope that he would have had this the first time around, but since he did not, it is unthinkable that he may have to pay the price without the chance at all. Especially when the price is his one life.

It is easy to feel powerless in these situations, but I hope you remember that you have one very powerful tool at your disposal: your voice. It may just be one voice, but as Thomas Jefferson said, one person with courage is a majority. I added my voice in the pursuit of justice on Amnesty International’s website about Troy Davis. If you are enraged by this situation as I am, I hope you will visit too, and add yours.

If newspaper headlines are any indication, the economic crisis is the only topic worth talking about. Gaza and the Super Bowl get their time in the sun here and there, but for the most part everyone is talking about everyone’s favorite topic: money. Thankfully it seems we’re spending a little less time rehashing who is to blame for the current state of affairs and are focused on how to get out of it.

The stimulus package currently on the Senate floor has many elements. It includes tax incentives for home buyers, lower mortgage rates, and billions of dollars on infrastructure spending. None of these things is set in stone of course, as the bill is still under debate, but the golden combination that seems to be preferred by politicians and economists is stimulating infrastructure and the housing market. The other piece of the pie is tax breaks to “working families” (whatever that means). There are dozens of proposed tax breaks, each with a vehemently passionate economist behind it. But the common thread running between all the various ideas is: how do we get the people to spend?

It’s an odd idea, in this country. When have the American people not spent? For better or worse, consumerism defines us as a nation perhaps better than any other concept. In the land that invented malls and McDonald’s, the real American dream seems to be to get more. The well-oiled advertising machine assures that we deserve the big screen TV at the same time that it makes sure we realize that what we have is never enough. More people visit the Mall of America annually than the Grand Canyon, the Smithsonian, and the Statue of Liberty combined. Americans spend hours on the internet every day, and the ubiquity of online shopping now means we need never be far from that coveted pair of shoes. And in addition to all that online time, the average American watches 4.5 hours of TV per day, and that includes over an hour of commercials.

I’m proud to be an American, but these things disturb me. I am certainly not immune to the allure of either a big screen TV or a fierce pair of heels, but the acquisition of goods is not a cornerstone of my existence and never will be. I am more concerned with my time, and how I spend it: with my loved ones, in places which revive me, and doing things which fulfill me. Of course, I am not the only one with these values, and they are not safe from the advertising behemoth either (just look at Hallmark commercials and tourism ads). Be it goods or services, advertisers want you to consume endlessly and voraciously, at the expense of everything else.

I don’t believe that advertisers are inherently evil, that the existence of the credit card is the root of all our problems, or that capitalism should die. What makes me sad is that so many people choose less-fulfilling lifestyles in order to buy more. Or as one unknown sage said: “you work a job you hate, to buy stuff you don’t need, to impress people you don’t like.” Keeping up with the Joneses is a national pastime, and folks will do just about anything to get the newest, fastest, shiniest, hippest product. And yet—despite sacrifices made for such purchases, there doesn’t seem to be any direct correlation between happiness and the amount of “stuff” a person has.

As omnipresent as the voice of consumerism is, the anti-consumerism culture is growing. More people are becoming concerned with the environmental impact of our consumption culture, and others simply can’t afford to spend so much. Campaigns such as Ad Busters and Kill Your Television promote a lifestyle focused on family, community, and personal fulfillment. Environmentally focused groups educate people on how to consume less as reducing one’s carbon footprint becomes a mainstream ambition. It actually seems like anti-consumerism may be on the rise, and it’s not just for hippies anymore.

So where does that leave us, in the current economic climate? Personal consumption makes up 70% of our economy. While it will take a lot to get the economy going again, it seems like it will be virtually impossible without increased spending. This is of course why the government is carefully crafting its tax cuts to inspire people to spend, not save. If there is one thing this country doesn’t need, it’s sound financial decisions on the part of the masses.

On the one hand, this seems like a perfect opportunity to stick it to The Man. “Oh yeah, you want me to spend that tax rebate? Well too bad for you, mega-conglomerate! I’m going to put it in savings and see if I care if you don’t get your Christmas bonus.” Unfortunately, it is not just The Man who gets short shifted by this thinking. We’ve been seeing for months the results of a crumbling retail industry. Thousands of jobs have been lost, and more announcements of more layoffs seem to come daily. This on top of the fiasco that is Wall Street and the worthless housing market has sent this country into an economic tailspin.

In addition to a massive unemployment rate, the dark side of an economy in crisis is a huge cutback in public spending. We all know that the arts, libraries, parks, and museums are the first programs to get the ax. So it seems the irony is that the very things that serve as alternatives to consumerism, the things that nourish us and keep us healthy in body and mind, are the first casualties of a drought in consumption.

It is the horrific nature of a country without these things that cause me to, for the first time in my life, call upon my fellow Americans to go out and spend some money. After all, it is not the products themselves which are the problem, but the place they hold in our lives. I believe that if you appreciate and enjoy your material wealth, but ultimately value it less than people, places, and activities, then happiness can always be yours whether you are flush or strapped for cash. So by all means, eschew television and orchestrate your plan for overthrowing Big Bad Business. But just for fun, go ahead and buy those shoes, just because you want to.